Stargirl Read Online Free PDF Page A

bench and was shooed away by a coach. At halftime she played her ukulele with the band.
    In the second half she got acrobatic. She did cartwheels and backflips. At one point the game was stopped and three zebra-shirted officials ran toward one end zone. She had shinnied up a goalpost, tightrope-walked out to the middle of the crossbar, and was now standing there with her arms raised in a touchdown sign. She was commanded down, to a standing ovation and flashing cameras.
    As we filed out afterward, no one mentioned how boring the game itself had been. No one cared that the Electrons had lost again. In his column next day, the sports editor of the
Mica Times
referred to her as “the best athlete on the field.” We couldn’t wait for basketball season.
    Was it a Hillari Kimble backlash?
    Several days after the birthday song, I heard a shout down the hallway: “Don’t!” I ran. A crowd was gathered at the top of a stairwell. They were all staring at something. I pushed my way through. Hillari Kimble was standing at the upper landing, grinning. She was holding Cinnamon the rat, dangling by its tail over the railing, nothing but space between it and the first floor. Stargirl was on the steps below, looking up.
    The scene froze. The bell for the next class rang. Nobody moved. Stargirl said nothing, merely looked. The eight toes of Cinnamon’s front paws splayed apart. Its tiny unblinking eyes were bulging, black as cloves. Again a voice rang out: “Don’t, Hillari!” Suddenly Hillari dropped it. Someone screamed, but the rat fell only to the floor at Hillari’s feet. She sent Stargirl a final sneer and left.
    Was it Dori Dilson?
    Dori Dilson was a brown-haired ninth-grader who wrote poems in a looseleaf notebook half as big as herself and whose name nobody knew until the day she sat down at Stargirl’s table for lunch. Next day the table was full. No longer did Stargirl eat lunch—or walk the hallways or do anything else at school—alone.
    Was it us?
    Did we change? Why didn’t Hillari Kimble drop the rat to its death? Did she see something in our eyes?
    Whatever the reason, by the time we returned from Thanksgiving break, it was clear that the change had occurred. Suddenly Stargirl was not dangerous, and we rushed to embrace her. Calls of “Stargirl!” flew down the hallways. We couldn’t say her name often enough. It tickled us to mention her name to strangers and watch the expressions on their faces.
    Girls liked her. Boys liked her. And—most remarkable—the attention came from all kinds of kids: shy mice and princesses, jocks and eggheads.
    We honored her by imitation. A chorus of ukuleles strummed in the lunchroom. Flowers appeared on classroom desks. One day it rained and a dozen girls ran outside to dance. The pet shop at the Mica Mall ran out of rats.
    The best chance for us to express our admiration came in the first week of December. We were gathered in the auditorium for the annual oratorical contest. Sponsored by the Arizona League of Women Voters, the event was open to any high school student who cared to show his or her stuff as a public speaker. The microphone was yours for seven minutes. Talk about anything you like. The winner would move on to the district competition.
    Usually only four or five students entered the contest at MAHS. That year there were thirteen, including Stargirl. You didn’t have to be a judge to see that she was far and away the best. She gave an animated speech—a performance, really—titled “Elf Owl, Call Me by My First Name.” Her gray-brown homesteader’s dress was the color of her subject. I couldn’t see her freckles from the audience, but I imagined them dancing on her nose as she flicked her head this way and that. When she finished, we stomped on the floor and whistled and shouted for more.
    While the judges went through the charade of conferring, a film was shown. It was a brief documentary about the previous year’s state finals. It featured the winner, a